Union Groups And Organizations Defend The Keystone XL Pipeline After Recent Comments By President Obama

The Keystone pipeline requires a presidential permit to be built. Photo: Reuters

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which represents more than 12 million men and women, along with the Laborer’s International Union of North America, or LIUNA, which represents hundreds of union chapters in the U.S. and Canada, joined forces in slamming President Barack Obama’s recent comments on the Keystone XL pipeline in a statement on their website Tuesday.

In an interview on Saturday with the New York Times, Obama said only 2,000 jobs would come out of the Keystone project.

“[M]y hope would be that any reporter who is looking at the facts would take the time to confirm that the most realistic estimates are [that] this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline – which might take a year or two.” Obama said. “Then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 [chuckles] jobs in a economy of 150 million working people.”

NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said that he disagrees.

“It is amazing to U.S. manufacturers and labor groups alike that President Obama would be so quick to discount the thousands of manufacturing and construction jobs that the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline would create,” Timmons, said. “Facts, not political expediency, should guide decisions related to Keystone’s approval. Based on estimates provided by numerous experts and the State Department’s own draft Environmental Impact Statement, the evidence does not side with the President’s claims.”

LIUNA President Terry O’Sullivan said that the president is not taking into account the economic opportunities that would benefit other laborers, manufacturers, small businesses and communities throughout the Keystone supply chain.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a proposed 875-mile-long pipeline that will deliver up to 830,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, and the Bakken Shale Formation to refineries in the Gulf Coast of the U.S. TransCanada Corporation (USA) (NYSE:TRP), the company that proposes to build the controversial pipeline, which has been delayed as it waits for a Presidential Permit.